Day 40: Fashion Faux Pas Health Hazards

What does a cinched waist belt, wedge sandals and a pair of metal aviator sunglasses have in common? 

On the Dr. Oz show yesterday, Dr. Oz and a fashion expert talked about the health hazards of some of the latest looks and what options you could do for a healthy fashion alternative.

Metal aviator sunglasses can cause rashes over time.  Substitute a pair of oversized plastic sunglasses for the same look.

Tight cinched belts can cause indigestion and restrict the abdominal muscles.  Skinny belts are the healthier and more comfortable option. 

Ankle wedge sandals can cause ankle damage and increase potential risk of injury when wearing them.  Instead substitute wedge sandals with a pair that have a supportive ankle strap or pick gladiator sandals.

 Be a smiling fashionista. Not a suffering fashionista.  Sacrificing comfort for fashion winds up giving you health consequences down the road.  Walk the runway pain free by choosing the better accessory.

Day 39: To Be or Not to Be Blonde? Hair Colour, Safe or Dangerous?

Spring is here.  Time to feel light, carefree and bright!  It's a time when in the past I would be heading to my hair colourist to get a sun-kissed glow on my crown!

For 27  years I highlighted my hair blonde.  I went for touch-ups anywhere from 4 to 10 weeks.  My hair grew lighter and lighter with various shades of blonde interwoven.  Hair bleach and hair dye are chemicals. 
Last fall I started doing research on hair colouring.  After spending nearly half my life colouring my hair, could I be putting myself at risk?

I did research from various sources and decided to go back to my natural colour.  As a child I was a dark blonde. My shade faded to light brown as a teen and I dove into using spray on lighteners before going full force into cap and then later foil highlights.  It wasn't until people in my peer group were being diagnosed with cancer that I started to question not just what I put in my body but also on my body.

Unlike henna which is natural, bleach and hair dye is toxic.  Hair stylists wear gloves to apply the colour.  The smells can be noxious if ventiliation is poor at the salon. 

What does Dr. Oz have to say about hair colour?

Read below and find out.

Artificial coloring on your hair, whether you're bleaching it or coloring it, is the equivalent of artificial coloring in food - it may make it look as pretty as can be, but it's not always the healthiest thing you can do to your head. There is some suspicion that permanent black hair dye can cause leukemia and lymphomas and some chemicals that are no longer used caused bladder cancer. Because of extensive lobbying in the 1930s, hair-dye manufacturers only have to put warnings on the labels for skin and eye irritation. But in the late 1970s, the FDA proposed a warning linked to products that used two coal-tar ingredients - 4-methoxy-m-phenylenediamine (4MMPD) or its sulfate cousin (it never was implemented).
Temporary hair dyes are safer than permanent dyes, so the purple Mohawk you're considering probably poses little risk to your health - though it won't help you ace your next job interview, either. Bleaching, on the other hand, will really run up your hair bill as you try to salvage permanent damage.
Here's why: The pigment of your hair comes from the inner two layers. When you bleach your hair, you damage the shingles that create the covering of the hair shaft. The dye, which slips through the gaps in the outer layers, swells to give your hair a different color. But the prior or current damage the bleach caused allows the dye to slowly slip out of the hair, so we end up losing the full body of the hair faster than if we had just left it alone.
Now, in the olden days, hair dyes were toxic. Women who had their hair dyed monthly were twice more likely to get bladder cancer. Dyes have changed, but some still contain lead, known to cause neurologic damage. Others contain the skin-irritant coal-tar; if you get it in your eyes, you can lose your vision. Coal-tar hair dyes have also been linked to cancer in animals. The FDA has tried to put a ban on hair dyes that contain a coal-tar-like chemical called 4-MMPD, but manufacturers have fought this. Any dye that penetrates the skin is a cause for concern. It will take several more decades to know if hair dyes currently in use have subtle side effects.
I'll quote Billy Joel when it comes to bleaching, dying, and adding hot-pink highlights: "I like you just the way you are."

Find out more about this book: YOU: Being Beautiful

Another article is found in the International Agency for Researchy on Cancer, March 26, 2008.

Article date: March 26, 2008

Regular exposure to hair dyes, processing agents, and other chemicals used in hair salons and barbershops probably increases cancer risk, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a World Health Organization panel that maintains the world's most commonly-used system for classifying carcinogens. But there’s not enough evidence to say whether personal use of these products is linked to elevated risk, according to the report.
The IARC has labeled these occupations as "probably carcinogenic to humans," a classification the agency reserves for those exposures backed by fairly strong evidence.

It took me to my mid-forties to feel good about being who I am, all natural, darker hair and all.  The confidence that my highlights gave me is not as strong as the belief I have that I am making a healthier choice today for tomorrow!

Be you rather than Blonde, Brunette or Red!

Day 38: Christening my Bicycle! Spring Has Sprung!

Hurrah!  Here in Toronto the weather reached 19/20 degrees celsius and spring has finally sprung!

A few days ago Dr. Oz said on his show that when it comes to anything to keep you motivated with exercise, "if you don't love it, you won't do it".  Well, yesterday, my Dad, husband and I dug out a patch of our backyard lawn for a vegetable garden.  Today I cycled.  Old favourites of mine!

I cycled all afternoon with my husband.  We cycled through Riverdale and to Yorkville.  I haven't cycled that much in over 17 years. There was a time when I cycled to university, to my summer job at Ontario Place and as my preferred mode of transportation. I used to bring my bike on a bike rack and cycle in Niagara on the Lake, Cape Cod, Nantucket, Ottawa and Montreal.

Then babies came, my bike was forgotten and replaced with Little Tykes wagons, tricycles and kids' bikes. 

Being a single mom to two little kids for a few years while teaching kindergarten and primary aged school children all day left me with little time or energy to focus on my past loves.

My spring crush is my bike. Spring fever has re-ignited bike fever.

Right now I am on an exercise high so I am not sure if my leg muscles will be tired out tonight or tomorrow.  My legs haven't had this type of workout since my late twenties.

If you want to feel free and young again while giving your heart and body a great work-out, dust off your bike or treat yourself to a sturdy and easy to ride bike and GET CYCLING!

Day 37: Hedging Bets on the Royal Wedding

Pick up any newspaper, current affairs magazine or read any online UK paper website, everyone has started to hedge bets on the long-term outcome of the royal soon to be newlyweds?  Kate is not Diana and Will is not Charles.  In Day 35, Dr. Oz talks about the ways in which healthy marriages can boost longevity.

Will Kate and Will survive? They met eight years ago at age 20.  According to Macleans magazine, the couple has had a pretty uneventful courtship and they have lived together for a few years now.  They had a brief break up but got back together.

Charles maintained his friendship and relationship with Camilla whilst married to Diana. He wound up with his first love after Diana's death after Camilla left her husband. Back in those days, social circles evolved around face to face charity events, polo matches, balls and other regal celebrations with high society.

What about now? Will the advent of the internet, that is emails, texting, social network sites like Facebook mean that one day Will or Kate will be leaving one another?  Dr.Oz's wife, Lisa talks about the importance of communication in couples.  When you love yourself and have a healthy relationship with yourself, you are better equipped to establish boundaries with the ones you love.

Facebook is now one of the top reasons why couples stray.  All of a sudden, with the click of a mouse, you can get in touch with people you have not kept in contact with in ten , twenty or thirty years.

I was briefly on facebook a year and a half ago and deleted my account.  Most of the people who were contacting me were former male friends from highschool and past loves from my single years.  If I had really wanted to keep in touch with these folks because of common bond or circle of friends, we would not have lost touch.  Atlhough flattered I was remembered, it made me uncomfortable and I realized that when it comes to sharing details about my life and photos, I do that with my inner circle of friends and family. Not online. So I went off Facebook.

Will and Kate?  Where will they be in twenty or thirty years?  I hope together and attending their offsprings' weddings.

My marital advice to Will and Kate is what Dr. Oz says to couples: Hug each other every day and spend time connecting emotionally.

When your arms are around each other, they won't be clicking the mousepad or around someone else.

Here is what the UK Indepedent Paper Has To Share:

"Affairs are fizzling out, and the change is recent. If the final years of this decade are sounding the death-knell for the affair, the late Nineties and early Noughties were its zenith – and ever-cheaper technology was the fuel philanderers used to stoke the flames of desire. Increasingly available technology – mobile phones, SMS messages, internet connections, BlackBerrys and Bluetooth – made it easier than ever to make contact and stay in touch. "Technosexuals" used phones, email and the internet to hook up with partners for easy encounters. Bluetooth allowed the unfaithful to pick out potential partners on trains and in bars. Research by the London School of Economics found that a quarter of mobile-phone users sent sexually explicit text messages, and one in six people flirted with someone who was not their partner via their phones.

As home PCs became affordable, huge numbers of the populace went online. Through websites such as Friends Reunited, we started to seek out long-forgotten friends, often for romantic reasons. The same story was played out in homes across the globe. Bored husbands and housewives, hypnotised by Windows 95 and the wonders of a 24-bit per second dial-up internet connection, would wobble along the information superhighway from the comfort of the spare bedroom, track down high-school sweethearts and start affairs. Six month later, the marriage would be over. Luddites didn't stand a chance.

Even the England goalkeeper David James succumbed to the lure of Friends Reunited and walked out on his 13-year marriage after rekindling an affair with an old flame through the nostalgia-driven website.

Friends Reunited, launched in 1999, was arguably the first mainstream social networking site. More than 15 million people subscribed. It was suddenly easy for any Tom, Dick or Harriet stuck in a loveless marriage to try to revive the carefree romances of their youth. Friendships that had lapsed decades ago were dusted off, and affairs were inevitably started.

It became easier than ever to find people to cheat with. At the same time, the logistics of an affair also became easier, thanks to burgeoning communication online.

And it won't stop there. The BT futurologist Ian Pearson predicts that in the next 10 to 15 years urban positioning technology will mean that you can text an attractive person in a bar just by pointing your phone at them. He also predicts the rise of technology such as "ego-badges"; jewellery-like devices on which you will be able to upload personal information for transmission to passers-by. ations technology. The very structure of the way we communicate with each other changed. Personal mobile phones outsold home phones; text messaging abbreviations crept into standard language; kisses at the end of communications became common; emails replaced "snail mail" and then replaced telephone calls; and finally, face-to-face conversations diminished as office workers began emailing colleagues sitting next to them rather than speaking to them. "

The Independent UK Paper Online

May Kate ande Will have a marriage that boosts their health and longevity.  May they break bread around their table with royal generations to come.

Day 36: How Much Is Your Emotional Account Worth?

Building or depleting your emotional bank account?

One's emotional bank account in life works in the reverse order from your money account. The more deposits you make doing good deeds for others, the more your own emotional account grows in equity.

Easter for some of us is a a three or four day long weekend. For those of us who are Christians, or if we are affiliated with other religious denominations, the first long weekend in Spring has elements of reawakening, rebirth and rejuvenation. 

On Day 35 Dr. Oz shared some stories about love and devotion from his medical practice and his own family life.  What I found admirable is that he stated to his daughters, that the best thing he had ever done was marry their mother.  Testimonial love, becoming more rare these days.

My parents will be celebrating their 46th wedding anniversary next week.  They married at age 25 after meeting at a church confirmation party several years prior.  A year later, my twin brother and I were born.  They both share similar backgrounds, having come from Latvia to Canada in the late 1950's.  Much of their childhood was spent in a Red Cross refugee camp in Germany and later both sets of my grandparents and my parents lived in various parts of France, before being sponsored to come to Canada.

My brother and I were raised to be grateful for our opportunities.  As a first generation Canadian, I can attest that despite the importance of being financially secure, I also learned  that one's emotional bank account is equally if not more important.  My grandparents left behind their family businesses, homesteads and assets to start a new life with their children.  All they had was each other to rely on. 

Appreciatively, I grew up observing my parents look after my grandparents health, home repairs and well-being so that they were able to live independently in their own homes until their late eighties and early nineties.  I hope to return the favour to my parents one day. 

When it comes to emotional bank accounts in your immediate circle, do you deposit more into your loved ones accounts or do more withdrawals?

Dr. Oz encourages people when they first wake up to do stretching. He also suggests a few minutes of meditation, visioning your day and at  some point in the day, paying gratitude to the good things in your life.  Keeping a gratitude journal sounds corny but it goes hand in hand with your emotional bank account.

The more grateful you are in life, in general the longer you will live.  Regardless of your bank assets.

It takes more effort to do something nice for someone else than it does to make a withdrawal from another.

This weekend, join me in rediscovering your emotional bank account.  Are you happy with the reservoirs you are building with your immediate family and friends?  Is there anything you can do to build up someone else's emotional account?

Day 35: Relationship Q and A with Dr. Oz

Easter is a time to count our blessings.  Our emotional equity in relationships is often put aside for financial profits.  Often when people count their blessings, health and their loved ones may not even make the top three list.

It's easy to take our significant others, family and friends for granted. Dr. Oz often talks about happiness and mentions that people who demonstrate gratitude and do thoughtful things for others e.g., volunteering, helping a stranger, an act of kindness for a loved one, have less stress and health ailments in their lives.

Most of my blog posts to date have been about diet and exercise.  What about our emotional well-being?  Our relationship with ourselves and one another?

Below is a Q and A with Dr. Oz that I stumbled across on the web.  Here is what he has to say about marriage, parenting, raising his children (he has four by the way) and the message he passed on to his daughter who recently tied the knot.

Dr. Oz on marriage and fidelity

Dr. Oz: Well in the animal kingdom it is very common for males and females not to bond for life. It’s a norm that they don’t, and there are even some cases where we’re pretty sure that there are actually infidelities occurring. And of course, proving this and putting a moral context to it is not fair, because in the animal kingdom there are different rules of engagement, so it’s hard to translate it directly. But it’s not unreasonable for anyone on this call to think that there’s a natural inclination for males and females to stray. But part of what’s made humans such a cool species is that we have been able to break rules from the animal kingdom. And one of the most important ones is trust and the ability to create a long-lasting relationship. We have over and over again demonstrated it correlates with longevity. Pay attention to the important things in life, which at the top of that list is the family relationship and the covenants you have with each other, is critical to the survival of our species. It always has been, it is what allowed us to come out of Africa 50,000 years ago and settle the entire world. And when we are at our best we pay attention to these covenants. We don’t make them rules that bind us and hold us from living life, we make them supportive, lessons that allow us to live life to the best and I think that where marriage ought to live.

Dr. Oz on how children can change a marriage

Dr. Oz: … Well you know there’s a couple of things that happen. When women

bear a child, especially the first child of a marriage, the father will often start seeing his wife as a mom rather than his lover… And that’s an understandable transition. There is something so sacred about a baby coming into existence. And the preciousness of that being gets in the way sometimes of the sexual relationships that we have that got us there in the first place. And so that needs to be clear to both father and wife, that they are there for each other and they have to support each other throughout that process.

And I remember I was doing an operation — I still do heart surgery — and so I was taking care of this guy and his wife was 24 weeks pregnant. And at 24 weeks, the baby is barely viable. I mean most of those kids, 50/50 will make it, maybe a little more. But it’s tough, and so before I went into the operation I had to ask the husband in private a very direct question. I said to him that he’s got two relatives on the table with me — you know his wife and to be born child — I said there is going to be a time probably in this operation where I’m going to have to make a decision that benefits one over the other. She had a mitral valve that had torn, so I had to do the heart surgery on her. And I said what’s your choice? And he said there’s no question about it, I married my wife, I know who she is. My child is, although I love the unborn baby and would love to have the baby, my loyalty is to my wife. And that’s what I think was the right answer in that case. And when we did the operation we paid attention to the mom and the child. But when the crisis occurred, we favored the mom a little bit. It turned out fine. The baby was born a couple of weeks later and everything worked out well. But that’s the ultimate decision you have to make in a family that’s just had a new child. Another thing with children, of course, (is) actually one of the benefits. The nice thing about a child is a child doesn’t care what you’re studying tomorrow. The child cares about now. So when you come home and you’ve had a difficult day — in my case if I’ve lost a patient or the show tapings didn’t go well — and when I get home and they want to play horsy. You know, it just changes your balance. You don’t care about the other things. It’s a very grounding experience.

Dr. Oz’s advice to his own daughters

I asked Dr. Oz what advice he gives his own daughters. I know my father was a strong influence on me.

Dr. Oz: Well the first important observation as a father is that your teenage daughters generally don’t care what you think. So you have to sort of insert yourself into their lives innocuously, and then over time sometimes they’ll open up. One very good way of doing that is to walk into their room and just sit there. I know that sounds crazy, but after you lie there for a while they’ll tell you that they don’t want you there. They’ll ask why you’re here and then after a few minutes they soften up and then they’ll say something, and then something else. When they were little girls, I used to always tell (them) bedtime stories because I knew that at night, when they were about to fall asleep, is when their guard come down. They begin to release and relax, and then you can actually start to tell them stories, fables and insights that might influence in a subtle way how they think about the world.

So what are the messages I tried to deliver them? First I emphasize that the smartest

thing that I ever did, the best thing that ever happened to me, was marrying their

mother, Lisa. I want them to hear that over and over again because it is a huge

bungee cord jump when you make that decision, male or female. Too often now, we

have people who are arguing about the hassles of marriage. And the beauty of

marriage is often not readily apparent to kids because they remember the conflicts

more then the bliss. So I emphasize that to them.

My eldest daughter Daphne, who just turned 24,  just got married this summer… I told her when she was a little girl — and I tell her sisters — that I think getting married at an early age is a very wise thing to do. It gives you a lifelong partner, before you started getting jaded and change your mind and start feeling the pressure of getting married. And start to think that you’re going to marry the perfect person if you just wait long enough, and then you feel the time pressure because you never found that person. Just recognize that there is no perfect person for you. You’re going to find someone that you have an emotional and physical connection to that you love, but for good or for bad, they’re not the perfect person for you. You’re going to make them the perfect person for you either by changing yourself or changing them. And it’s that coming together that makes marriage a remarkable event. That’s why arranged marriages for so many years — I’m not arguing to arrange marriages — but that’s why arranged marriages were often such an effective way of binding people because if the families got along, at least you had a social glue to get the couple to make peace when conflicts occur which happens anyway. And so I wanted them to be comfortable making the decision to get married early, and not sense that that’s not the norm anymore. Because, you know, Daphne’s the first in her group (who) went to Princeton, of her graduates to get married. So they were all at the wedding. You know she must have had like 12 or 14 bridesmaids. I lost track.

And so as they were all sitting around talking about this, I noticed that none of them

were married yet. It did, I think, make a lot of people comfortable over time to see that, you know, it’s a choice you make and you live with it. And some of her classmate won’t get married for another decade. Some of them will never get married, but I didn’t want her to have pressure either way. When she found the right person, pull the trigger and she doesn’t have to wait. There’s no benefit to that and there’s no penalty if does find the right person either.

I found the ideas of Dr. Oz interesting because he does not often refer to his daughters or wife on  his TV show. Nor does he speak much of specifics when it comes to giving fatherly advice.

I, Maija leave you with this Easter message:

Life is a lot like an Easter egg hunt.  We spend much of our lives trying to look for and locate the "golden" egg.  The egg(s) that will bring us good luck and fortune for the rest of our lives. 

Jack and the Beanstalk stole the hen that laid golden eggs from the giant.  He and his mother lived happily ever after.  So what if he sold his cow for the beanstalk beans.  At least he didn't sell his mother off.

But seriously, what I share with you is my own little nugget of wisdom. You will never ever be satisfied if you spend your whole life hunting for eggs, collecting as many as you can in your basket.  While doing so, you will likely end up cracking and damaging the eggs. Eggs are fragile. 

In the end, one's hunt for meaning in life comes down to this well known quote: Life is not about finding yourself. It is about creating yourself.

Create. Don't collect.

Day 34: Living Dr. Oz has it's good days and bad days....

Here is the scoop:  Living Dr. Oz has it's ups and downs. 

Eating healthy is the way to go but there are days where  the weather is dreary (e.g., here in Toronto, Canada it is cold, wet and rainy), when you are feeling frazzled or tired, when you miss plain old junk food....when you want to throw in the towel.

Today I have been craving something that is greasy, fatty, sugary......anything outside of a crisp, chilled juicy apple!

At work I don't have anything unhealthy so as you can guess, it has made me fantasize about something sweet or goopy (or .........fill in the blank with your choice of what's on your "no-eats" list) for most of the day.

Part of me wants to indugle over the next few days but I know that the Dr. Oz lifestyle is about thinking of ways to make it work for you.

So, what do I need to do to bring this back to being a positive experience?

Well, I will pick up some hummus and other low-fat tasty dips to enjoy my vegetable and fruit slices with, rather than eating them plain.  If I am sick of blueberries, then I need to try another fruit like kiwi to get me excited about good food choices again.  The fish recipe I make can be jazzed up with new types of fish, marinades and coating.

I will dig up the recipe book and go on the Dr. Oz website and choose some new meals rather than stick with the same old, same old which can get boring.

And I will follow the advice Dr. Oz gave yesterday when he made suggestions on how to lose those stubborn pounds and belly fat that creep up on you as you age: "If you don't love it, you won't do it". 

In otherwords, if I don't like doing an hour of regimented exercises to a DVD or on my own, then maybe I can do things such as tending to my soon to be new vegetable garden which would include many of the stretches, and strength training due to the physical labour of gardening.


Eat what you love. Choose an exercise that you enjoy.  Good health will follow.